


brush back your hair (and let me get to know your flesh)

by SegaBarrett



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Child Abuse, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9599987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: The forging of a trio can be a tricky task.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Gotham, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title is from "The Musical Box" by Genesis.

She would remember it as if time had stopped. One moment, she was directly in front of a train, and the next she was, well, here.

Wherever “here” was, exactly. It was harshly white in a way a hospital shouldn’t have been, but that had to be what it was… a hospital?

The only sound was the tick tock of a clock on the wall, endlessly ticking seconds away. She wanted to talk, to call for someone to come explain this all to her, but something was stopping her. 

A lot of strange things tended to happen in Gotham. Was this one of the places people whispered about? The places people got whisked off to suddenly?

Her breath quickened, and she tried to swallow. There was something in her throat. 

Her eyes fluttered again. It was too much effort to try to keep them open. 

She would sleep, now.

***

The tube was gone when Isabella woke up again, but she was still in the same weird, too-white room, the kind of place that made her think of songs she hadn’t heard since she was a child. 

“Hello?”

There was one dastardly thought pulling at her ears and in her brain – Penguin. That was what they had called him, wasn’t it?

He had to be behind this. He had warned her to stay away from Ed, that he belonged to Penguin. 

And now he had tried to kill her to keep her out of the way.

She tentatively reached a leg over the bed, placing it on the ground.

She gasped out. Ever inch was a Herculean effort. She had to get back to Ed, back to tell him what had happened. She couldn’t slip away until he knew the truth. 

She’d break open Penguin’s plan, shatter it. She would win.

***

“Isabella, don’t slouch.” Her mother had told her that every day, even when she wasn’t old enough to know what the word actually meant. As if a two-year-old could slouch, or do anything but slouch. Not that it mattered, given that no one looked her way. She wasn’t graceful or athletic or any smarter than anyone else.  
Real life had been dismal.

But books had been an escape. She had piled them high and carried home ten, twelve at a time, reading a chapter at a time so she could keep caught up on every old friend.

She knew that if she were smart enough, if she tried hard enough, things would eventually pay off.

She styled her hair in the manner of an old Hitchcock film – maybe, she thought as she looked at herself in the mirror, she was an old soul. Maybe that was why she felt so alone in this world.

“Sometimes,” her father told her, “I don’t believe you’re even Catherine’s daughter at all. But she would know, wouldn’t she?”

He would chuckle and then move on his way. It wasn’t like him to challenge his wife. 

***

Maybe Kristin Kringle had felt alone, too. Maybe the two had been meant to find each other in some kind of screwed up Parent Trap of a meeting. But it had never happened; the record keeper had been long dead by the time Isabella crossed Edward’s path. 

Isabella had been confined to looking through old photos and trying to figure out what had attracted Ed to her – maybe there was a switch in there, something that would draw him in, something irresistible. 

That didn’t answer the question, however, of exactly what Isabella wanted from him. 

Was she just excited to finally get that burst of summer love, long past the age that women were supposed to get it? Or was there something else?

Maybe it was Ed’s very darkness that drew her close to him. Or the fact that she had no living rival. Or at least, so she had thought.

Then there had been the Penguin.

Isabella pressed her hand against the door. Maybe she could reach up and open the door, ever so slowly. 

She slipped her hand up and grasped the doorknob. The metal felt stiff, and she stifled a cry as she tried to pull it to the side. 

It seemed as if it fell out from under her.

She was free.

***

Edward Nygma was deep in mourning. If it were possible to be, in fact, overloaded by mourning (he tried to fit it into his busy schedule, place it somewhere behind the envelopes), then he was fitting the bill.

That had to be why he thought he’d just seen her walking by. Or perhaps fate had it that there had been three women who all looked very much alike. Unlikely, however – finding a doppleganger to Miss Kringle had been unlikely enough in the first place. 

“Edward!”

And now he must be hearing things, too. It was all like a bad dream – from Isabella’s death to the fact that Oswald was behind it to the fact that he had somehow gotten roped into working with Barbara and Taby of all people. How had his life gone so wrong so quickly?

“Ed!” There it was again, and there was the distinct feeling of someone tapping on his shoulder. Maybe he shouldn’t turn around – he could visualize something that might send him back to Arkham. It wasn’t as if Oswald would get him out if he went back, now. 

He whipped around and nearly staggered backwards as she saw her.

There was a huge scar across her face, just as it had been the day he had walked in to identify her. 

People in Gotham really needed to stop coming back from the dead. It was getting out of control.

“Isabella… What are you… doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

He watched her face and tried to figure out what he was feeling. He had closed off his heart and couldn’t dig back into it again.

What did this mean about him and Oswald now? Was the crime undone because the victim was back?

Then again, Gotham or not, the quickest route between two points was still a straight line – more likely than Isabella (or Kristen) back from the dead was the explanation that Edward really did belong in Arkham these days because grief had driven him off the deep end. That seemed the scientific rationale for it.

It didn’t stop him from asking her, “What happened to you? Where have you been? I thought you were…”

“I guess I’m harder to kill than Oswald Copplepot thought.”

Edward stared at her. 

“I know.”

“So what do we do now?” 

Edward let out a long sigh. This hadn’t been part of his plans. He had grieved; he had moved past it all. He hadn’t planned on her coming back. 

It was almost as if he didn’t truly remember her, not really. It was like she was a dream he had woken up from a long time ago and only blurrily remembered.

***

How they came to find themselves in front of Oswald Copplepot’s mansion wasn’t entirely clear to any of the three involved. Perhaps it was one of those ideas that had seemed better at the time. 

Ed hated him, he really did, and he was ready to destroy his life. To bring down his entire empire and laugh at him as he rose to the top to stare at Oswald down on the bottom.

But a little voice in his head told him that it was a do-over, and another, more disconcerting voice reminded him that this meant that Oswald Copplepot was willing to kill for him. That his jealousy was rooted in misdirected devotion. Wasn’t that what Edward had wanted, once upon a time? To be the only one Oswald trusted?  
Where had it all gone haywire; where had the mayor veered left when he should have gone right? Or had it been Edward who had veered?

The door opened, and Olga let them both into the house, gazing between them with a bored look that showed she had already seen and ignored a great deal that had gone on at her employer’s house. Discretion was quite clearly key.

“This is probably a mistake,” Isabella spoke up, and Edward nearly hushed her before stopping himself. They needed to both be here – this involved them both, however it was going to work out. 

“Edward! What an amazing surprise…” Mayor Oswald Copplepot’s voice nearly sang out; Edward could hear him long before he could see him, both the laboring step and excited tone. There was something about it, something about him – that stopped Ed right in his tracks.

There was something seizing his gut, something making him want to run but unable to. What was this feeling, exactly? 

And why was it hitting him now that Oswald Copplepot was entering the room and not when his girlfriend had pulled a Lazarus right back into his life?

It had to be hate, he told himself, blinding hate in fact.

It wasn’t until Oswald walked into the room and saw Isabella that he stopped dead in the tracks.

No sound was coming out, but Ed was sure that the Penguin was screaming.

***

“You’re alive?”

“I’m not that easy to kill,” Isabella said again, but it lacked the bite of the first time she’d said it. Her head hurt; the whole situation was insane. Why did she come back to Ed as opposed to taking off, maybe swiping some person’s social security number (or using her own, considering the circumstances)?

“It’s… good to see you back.” Oswald’s voice was dripping with bitterness. She thought he would throw a tantrum, maybe begin smashing things. Maybe try to kill her all over again.

“Oswald, let’s speak plainly,” Ed said, stepping between the two. “I… know your motivations. And it’s… almost flattering that you would kill for me. And maybe I should have expected as much, considering all the time we both spent in Arkham. And you can kill anyone else – in fact, I can give you a list. But from here on out, Isabella is out of bounds.”

Oswald screwed up his face and crossed his arms.

“But Ed…”

“No negotiation.”

Oswald seemed to consider this for a long while.

Isabella’s mind went dancing. Logically, she should have turned and left. Odd for a person to come back from the dead; lucky, really, too lucky – almost as if set up to be terribly unlucky somewhere down the road as payback.

But there was a strange flattery in the realization that Oswald still considered her a threat.

“So,” she spoke up, her voice suddenly booming out. The librarian shouts. “Is this… an ultimatum? Are you choosing one of us?”

“Yes, and no.” Ed smiled, as if coming up with a riddle to explain all of this. “I’m choosing you both.”

They glowered at each other.

“Us both?” Isabella asked.

“Ed, you can’t…” Oswald started.

“Oh, yes I can. Maybe the old Edward Nygma couldn’t… But he was weak.” He reached out to put an arm on each partner’s shoulder, pulling them in tight. “And we,” he shook them all gently, “Will… not try to kill each other. Understood?”

***

“I can’t believe they already took everything in my apartment.”

“Gotham’s a hard place, Isabella. The sooner you figure that out the better,” Oswald said, the Penguin preening as he looked at the looted loft. 

“What am I going to wear? You know, besides this. Every day. For the rest of my life.” Isabella looked down at the tattered hospital gown she had been walking around in. She hadn’t really noticed it all of the chaos.

Oswald made a tsk-ing sound.

“I have some of my father’s old outfits in our closets. Perhaps there’s something there that can fit you.” Ed shot Oswald a look. “Temporarily. I’ll send Ed out to go shopping with you. My dime, of course. I’m the mayor!” Oswald said shrilly, before limping off in the direction of the closets. 

A few moments later, she found herself dressed in an oversized men’s shirt and a dark brown leather suit. A funny reflection she made in the full-length mirror in Oswald’s bathroom. 

It reminded her of the old Isabella, the one who always had her head stuck in a book. She could remember…

****

“Ow!” Isabella cried out as her mother slammed the book shut on her hands.

“I’m trying to raise a debutante,” her mother snarled, “Not a little bookworm. Get up and get dressed. We have places to be, and I want you in tip-top shape.”

“I’m just trying to finish this chapter.” Isabella waved her hand in front of her to relieve the sting, then opened it back up again. “I’ll be done in ten minutes.”

“You’ll be done when I say you’re done.”

One day she’d run away…

****

She looked across Ed, at Oswald, and smiled her sweetest smile.

“I think it will all work out just fine. No hard feelings, Mayor Copplepot. I understand completely.”

“Certainly. There will be no future incidents.”

Isabella could tell that Oswald was looking at her slender neck and wondering how it would feel to break it in his bare hands. She undid another button to give him a better look at it.

“I’m glad to be… in this… with you, Isabella.” Oswald extended his hand. “I’m sure you’ll have a lot to offer… the administration. I mean, you could head up the research department. You’re such a… bookworm, after all.”

Isabella wondered if the Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe would be big enough to accidentally squash Oswald’s brain.

She beamed.

“That’s so very nice of you.”

They both turned to Edward and kissed him on the cheek.


End file.
